Fight for your vulnerability, a conversation with Jonathan Banning

In this episode of Balancing the Christian Life, we talk about vulnerability. Welcome to Balancing the Christian Life. I'm Dr Kenny Embry. Join me as we discover how to be better Christians and people. In the digital age. It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena. This is not Scripture. This is not in the Bible. This is, however, words of Teddy Roosevelt, one of those guys that I've come to admire the older I've gotten. As Christians, one of the things that I think we struggle with the most is vulnerability. When you are actually in the arena, that means that people get to see what you do and likewise get to second guess why you did it. Vulnerability is one of those things that I don't think we do very well as Christians, and it was about a year ago that I had talked to Jonathan Banning. Jonathan and I were talking about second generation Christians. He did a great job, but during that conversation, I asked a question and he paused. I understood why he paused, but I wanted him to articulate why he did, and he told me this is something where I'm very vulnerable. This is something I need to think about. I don't think Jonathan is unusual in that sentiment. I think a lot of us don't do well with vulnerability. So I asked Jonathan if he would be happy to talk about being vulnerable as a Christian and he said yes. Jonathan and his wife and his children live in Tampa where I do, where he is an evangelist at the Temple Terrace Church of Christ. He's just one of those guys that I've gotten to know recently but really become to admire and love. So, jonathan, let's start here. Why do we have such a problem with vulnerability?

I think, before we really get into it, there are a couple of caveats that are very important to make. The first one is I try very hard not to comment on things that I don't know. We try to talk about the way things are everywhere when we really don't know what they're like. I like to say the biggest problem with the church is sweeping generalizations.

Including that sweeping generalization.

That's exactly right. When we talk about this, I want you to know, if you're listening from Idaho or Oregon I don't have any idea what it's like going to church in Oregon or Idaho. I don't have any church, any idea what your family is like there, what your spiritual family is like. Please don't think that I'm trying to step on your toes or that you need to respond and say, well, that's not the way it is here. I'm talking about my experience. If you feel that way, have some similarity to my experience, then learn from it. And if you feel like this doesn't apply to you, then that's wonderful. And the other thing is, when we talk about vulnerability, I think we have to appreciate that it's kind of a dangerous discussion, because when we talk about this, we're typically talking about confessing our sins, opening up about our tiptations, letting other people know what our struggles are, where we've messed up, and I think there is a delicate balance to strike there. The Bible is very accepting of lament. When we start to whine, then we see God's people start to get punished. Confession is good, but giving up and tolerating and accepting sin is not. There is a bit of a balance there that kind of makes it very hard for us to talk about vulnerability sometimes. Those two things being said, yes, I think in my experience, what I have seen is that disciples and churches struggle a great deal being vulnerable. It's not something that comes easy to us. We're not very comfortable confessing sin. We're not comfortable letting other people know what trials we're going through. We very much want to put up that shiny veneer that says everything is perfect and everything is fine. Vulnerability requires risk. In my experience, disciples love to play it safe and we do not like to take risks, which is what you have to do if you're going to be vulnerable.

CB, and we've already used the word a few times. It might help us to define what we're talking about. What does vulnerability mean? How does the Bible use the idea of vulnerability?

CB. That's interesting too, because the Bible really doesn't use the word vulnerable, does it CB? No, CB. In my translation in the CSB, you can find it one time. It's in Nehemiah, chapter 4, when it talks about he stationed men at the vulnerable parts of the wall. That's it. It's kind of hard to have a Bible discussion about something that's really not a Bible word, but it really is a Bible idea. If you look up the etymology of the word, it comes from the Latin word volness, which means to hurt, injure, maim or wound. Quite literally, being vulnerable means that you have made it possible for someone to wound you. You have taken a risk by exposing yourself and made it possible for someone to hurt you. If we're going to define vulnerability, that's how I would find it is exposure to the possibility of being wounded or harmed. Vulnerability is all about risk. Like we said, it's about opening yourself up, lowering your defenses, not playing it safe and making it possible for others to injure you. You do all of that for the sake of doing something meaningful, but it is a risky thing to do.

Really, what you're talking about there reminds me a lot of faith. There is a danger to faith, especially to a faith that is unfounded, to a faith that we would call a blind faith. But there is a big upside to faith as well, and really, when I consider what faith is, I'll go ahead and tell you I most often define faith as trust. There's a lot of trust that we have in other people, in some other people and in some ways, and not always. And when it comes to that idea of faith, to be truly faithful, you must also be truly vulnerable. What do you see, is the connection between faith and vulnerability?

So you also asked the question before where do you see it in the Bible? And those two ideas connect together. You see vulnerability in the Bible in the same places that you see faith. I see vulnerability in Peter and John in Acts 4. When the leaders say stop talking about Jesus and they say we're not going to, that's vulnerability. That's lowering your defenses, not playing it safe and taking a risk, exposing yourself to danger for the sake of doing something meaningful. I see vulnerability in Shadrach, meshach and Bednego when they say, king, we're not going to bow down, you can do with us what you want, throw us in the fiery furnace, that's fine, we're going to do what we need to do for God. You see it in Esther before the King, in Esther, chapter 5. You see it when Jesus is walking on the water and Peter has to get out of the boat. That's vulnerability. He's exposing himself to risk getting out of his comfort zone. That's what it's all about. We see vulnerability in more than just those risky evangelistic battlefield scenarios. We also see it in normal ways, in emotional ways, in spiritual ways. So you don't just see it in David choosing to fight Goliath without armor, which is vulnerability and which is faith. You also see it in Luke 7, when Jesus is dining at Simon's house and a woman from the city comes in, a woman that everybody knows is sinful and everybody thinks is awful, but she makes herself vulnerable enough to walk into a Pharisee's house and approach Jesus, this wonderful rabbi who's living this moral life and making all these amazing teachings, to seek his forgiveness. Really that's a vulnerability, because in her mind she doesn't know all the stuff that we know about Jesus. In her mind there's a distinct possibility that Jesus is going to say get away from me, you sinful woman. She takes an emotional, a social risk in doing that, which is also what we see in Matthew 9, with the woman who's suffering from the flow of blood when she reaches out and touches Jesus. It's what you see from the Syrophoenician woman in Mark, chapter 7, when she knows that Jesus is only interested in the Jews up to this point, but she's not going to stop screaming out and asking him to cast the demon out on her daughter. That's emotional and social vulnerability, lowering her defenses, taking a risk, not playing it safe for the sake of doing something that is meaningful. Maybe my favorite example is the thief on the cross where, only hours before. Here he is with his buddy hurling abuse at Jesus along with everybody else, but then, when he realizes his life is about to end, he's vulnerable enough to take that risk and say remember me when you come into your kingdom, with the distinct possibility that Jesus could have said dude, you were just insulting me like hardcore a few minutes ago or a few hours ago, and now you want me to remember you. I think that's a tremendous example of vulnerability, of opening up, lowering your defenses and not playing it safe.

You pay such a compelling picture of vulnerability and what the great side of it is. Why isn't everybody vulnerable if it just works out like that all the time, Jonathan?

Well, because it doesn't always work out like that. That's the way it works out when you're vulnerable with Jesus, but that's really not the way it works out. We talked about vulnerability as risk and sometimes, with fallible people, that risk doesn't pay off. When we usually talk about vulnerability, we're talking about not I'm going to go out and do something evangelistic that might get me punched in the face, even though that is vulnerability in a sense. We're talking about confessing our sin to our brothers and sisters, doing the James 516 thing. We're talking about confessing our struggles and our temptations. We're talking about looking at my brother in the eye and saying, hey, I struggle with lust, hey, I'm really struggling with my temper toward my kids, and maintaining that. We're talking about lowering those defenses and letting people see who we really are and what we're struggling with. There's a risk in that, where somebody could take that intimate knowledge and that knowledge is power, because they could use that knowledge to hurt me the reason why we hold back from all of that is because there is a risk there in fallible humans. They sometimes use that knowledge to their advantage and they use it to hurt us.

There is a real downside to this. There's a potential downside. I don't understand this. Maybe you understand it better than I do, but here you have Peter and Paul both they're in prison and they're loosed from prison. But then you have somebody like John the Baptist who is put in prison and then he's beheaded, or you have James, or you have all these. By tradition, we hear that Peter was crucified upside down. These guys paid a dear price for their vulnerability.

Was their vulnerability rewarded? I think it absolutely was. There is this downside that, inevitably, if I am the kind of person that says I'm going to be open about my sins, I'm going to confess my temptations and my struggles to you, I'm going to be open about that, I'm not going to hide that Then you are inevitably going to encounter that Luke 18, pharisee the one who looks at that and says they're going to judge you, they're going to condemn you, they're going to exalt themselves above you, they're going to accuse you of things that aren't true. They're going to say that the way you're vulnerable is inappropriate or it's dangerous or it's offensive, or it brings shame on the church or something like that. They're going to say things like that. You're going to encounter that I am not vulnerable just because it's going to be wonderful for me. What we see, even in Peter and Paul, even in all these people who are vulnerable and they end up suffering for their vulnerability what we see is that they accomplish something wonderful for others. That's really where the idea of vulnerability is. You can excise it from pop psychology and you can put it in a spiritual sense, because if you talk about vulnerability in a psychological sense, then everybody's talking about. We're vulnerable for ourselves because it's good for us and it helps us, and it helps us live our truest and our best lives. Biblical vulnerability is about other people. It's about I'm going to do this and I may suffer for this, but I have faith in God and, even if I do die, the example that I said is going to help other people.

You're reminding me of another character in the New Testament. He goes by the name of Jesus and the thing about it is that New Testament character was awfully vulnerable, but he had no weakness. My problem is I am both vulnerable and I have weakness. Jesus basically sacrificed everything for us. Do you think Jesus was truly?

vulnerable like we are? I think so. I mean, don't we see that in the garden? Father, if you're willing, let this cut pass for me. That's vulnerability. It really is, if we think about just the most fundamental definition of it, which is lowering your defenses, not playing it safe, exposing yourself to risk. That's what his life was all about. There's one aspect of vulnerability that he doesn't have to worry about, which is confessing sins. That's true, but he has no problem talking about his trials. He has no problem admitting in the garden that he doesn't want to go to the cross, which is funny. Jesus, the son of God, the perfect son of God, is willing to be more vulnerable about his temptations than we are, because you encounter the regular Christian in church on Sunday wearing their suit and tie, and they're never going to be willing to say man, I really don't want to be faithful to my wife this week. I really don't want to love my kids this week, when they've just been terrible rotten this week. He is more willing, as someone who has no sin and has every reason to not be vulnerable, he's more willing to be vulnerable at his temptations and his trials than we are.

It comes to again thinking about, well, to a certain extent, jesus, but more ourselves. The word I hear a lot about I hear a lot is the idea of authenticity. Is there a difference between being vulnerable and being authentic?

I think yes and no, okay, you're going to take both sides of this one. Okay, yeah, that's the perfect political answer. I think they're different, but they're connected. How so? Because authenticity is being the genuine article. Authenticity means real and genuine and sincere. I think there's just absolutely no way to be that without vulnerability. I would say they're different because they're not exactly the same thing, but they're connected in the sense that there is no way that you are ever going to be an authentic person if you're not willing to be vulnerable.

Unpack the idea of authenticity. What do you think authenticity is?

I think it is being willing to let other people see what your life is like and what you're like on the inside. That includes letting people know what my emotions are and what my true feelings are and what my actions are. It's just, it's living a life that is transparent, letting people see who I really am. It's important not to get that confused with again the way things work in pop psychology in our 21st century modern America. Right, because people say be your true self, live your best life, and that means, in a sense, don't ever change, don't try to grow and don't let anyone make you feel bad for basically following all of your impulses and desires. And that's not what we mean by authenticity. What we mean by authenticity is we're disciples, we're trying to grow, but we're willing to be real that that growth process is messy and long and arduous and sometimes we fall flat on our face when we're doing it.

I think there's another struggle that we have with authenticity is sometimes we don't even see ourselves very well. We are probably one of the worst people to ask about ourselves because and I've heard that our problem is we know what other people do, but we know what we meant to do and that we often give ourselves the benefit of the doubt because we knew the intention behind what we said. We know we didn't mean to call them stupid. We know we didn't mean that as an insult. We know what we meant by what we said, but the problem is they don't have a good view point into our minds. They don't know our perspectives. Do you think we are the best judge of what our authentic self is?

That's a really good question. I hadn't thought about that. It's another thing that I really like to say is never underestimate your own ability to deceive yourself. You see that all over the place with the Pharisees, they're whitewashed tombs, they're dirty dishes with a clean outside, and they don't see that one bit, which is terrifying. I think that every person can just make the simple choice to value the truth about themselves. If we are simply willing to, as Jesus says, use our ears and listen, then we can be the best judges of who we really are. That's one of those hard things, because, as a preacher, as somebody who teaches and tries to help people grow, what you want to do is you just want to make everybody do what they need to do. You can't, you are going to have to make the choice to look at yourself in the mirror without bias. There's really nothing I can say. Nothing I can do that can help you do that, other than simply asking questions. One of the things that's fascinated me over the past few years is just how often Jesus asks questions during his ministry. By my count, I have a whole document. He asked over 135 questions throughout the Gospels, which is funny because he's the one with all the answers. If he knows everything, why is he asking questions? The answer is because he never asked questions so he can learn something about us, but always to help us learn something about ourselves.

I'm not a preacher a regular preacher like you are, but there's a sermon I sometimes preach called Questions of Jesus. One of the questions that he asked was the blind man that he heals. It's a simple question, but he asks what do you want me to do for you? It's such a simple question and I think Jesus is basically asking us the same question as well. The blind man is asking for his sight. If he recognized that he was talking to the honest-to-goodness Son of God, is his sight the most important thing that he can get from the Son of God? Again, it's his perspective. He's really wanting his sight back, but there is so much more that he could ask for from the Son of God. In some ways, I think, he kind of short changes himself. You see what I'm saying. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah and I think, what is a question like that? What do you want me to do for you? What does that teach you about you?

Well, it teaches me that we don't always know what our own motivations are, you know, and we need to look inside ourselves and think about that and try to understand why I'm doing this Christianity thing, why am I even involved in all these things? And, really, authenticity, vulnerability, it all comes back to that initial self-honesty of not having the fear to and, honestly, the terror of looking into my own heart and asking those sorts of questions, because so often we live our lives and when we do this Christianity thing and we keep that door closed, we don't open it and really look around and investigate, because we're really scared about what we might find. You know, what do you want me to do for you? Jesus asked a similar question in John 1, right, you know? Why do you seek me? Right, you know? And so many of those questions are look inside yourself and consider who you really are and what you're really doing spending time with me.

I'll go ahead and put this out there as well. I don't think we're the best judges of our own motivations. I've been married long enough to know that when my wife calls me an idiot, I probably need to listen to what she's asked to say right after that, because she's probably focusing on something that I need to pay attention to that I probably do not understand about myself. I think the idea of hospitality is so important because it gets us out of roles and facades, and it's hard to play the church-building Christian when your kids are aggravating you and when things are not going well at the house and you are trying like crazy to keep sanity in the house. In some ways, I think of church-building Christianity the same that I think of Instagram that it is absolutely authentic, but it's a highlight reel. This is the best I can be and this is where I'm going to be the best that I can be. But most of my life is not Instagram. Most of my life is getting in a car, going to a gas station. You know the real, stupid, boring parts of life that end up taking up the majority of our lives, and I think that's not number one. I think that's where Christianity actually gets enacted. And number two I think that's probably not where we think about Christianity. Do you see what I'm saying there, jonathan?

No, I completely agree and I like what you say. I feel like you bring nuance to that idea that is really really missing among brethren, because you have one camp typically that says I absolutely am that exact person, I am at the church building all the time, right when they really aren't. And then you have the more cynical side, which I tend to be on, which says, nah, everybody's just fake when they're dressed up in their Sunday best. But I like the way you put it like, and I think that is true, that is the best I can be, and that's still me. Yeah, but it's true that I'm not always as good as that, and so in those other areas of our life we really see how we are the rest of the time.

I guess one of the things that I recognize is again in that authenticity versus vulnerability. Again, I'm not sure that we're the best ones to see to be authentic with ourselves. I think there's such a strong desire to give the right answer that we don't know what the true answer is for us. I'll go ahead and tell you my problem. One of my problems is faith in God, and that's not a comfortable thing for me to say, because I've said this. I'm teaching a Bible class on Luke right now, and one of the things that I said in there was I'm comfortable with God taking the wheel as long as I have the brakes. I wish that were not true. I wish I could give it all over to him, and there's a part of me that thinks yeah, but God also expects you to use your brain too. He's given you some smarts, he's given you some judgment. He's told you don't be stupid, go do the things you need to be doing. But at the same time there's a large part of scripture I don't see the scripture that says and maximize thy contribution to the 401k and make sure thou hast laid up for yourselves a good retirement account. And you know, part of me is very concerned about that. I recently came back from the Philippines where I just observed a lot of poverty, and in the United States I'm scared of poverty, but I saw poverty and when I was over there, poverty and generosity often went hand in hand and I didn't expect that. Let me ask you this, because here I am pontificating, I've enjoyed it. I think the danger of this is, especially when we aren't vulnerable, there's a self-righteousness that comes with that. Quite frankly, I think that's I am so sympathetic toward the Pharisees because I think that's where I end up. I think I appreciate that the Pharisees were very concerned, not just about the law but the perception of the law, and they were very worried about the law being taught, being upheld, and I think the Pharisees had a problem with the idea of grace. Quite frankly, so do I, I think of all the Pharisees', sadducees and just irregular Jew. I think I'm most sympathetic with the Pharisees, but the problem with the Pharisees was the hypocrisy and the self-righteousness. Do you see that connection between lack of vulnerability and self-righteousness and if so, why is there that connection?

I think so, and this is where it gets kind of tough and I get uncomfortable because I can't just point to a Bible verse and say look, in Proverbs it says this is the connection between the two. I do want to preface this by saying that I certainly do not think that my brethren are like Pharisees, and I know that's not what you meant. I'm not saying it was, but I think so often young people and people may be listening to this podcast might so readily say something like that. I really don't think that at all. But when it comes to vulnerability, what I have witnessed is we tend to like to keep up that veneer, which is what they liked to do, and so there's a similarity in that way. I think the connection between self-righteousness and vulnerability is this, and this is just my theory when you marinate in an environment where most people are not vulnerable, it's kind of a self-perpetuating problem. We begin to look around and say, well, that person never confesses their sins and that person never talks about how hard life is and that person never has any problems at all. And we know that it's outrageous deep down, but still on some level we say, well, maybe in this environment there's not a lack of vulnerability. Maybe all these people just have their lives together, and I'm the only one who doesn't. And I think when we look around and we think nobody else is struggling and they all have their lives together, then I think that our response that is well then, I'd better get my life together and I'd better make sure that I don't have any struggles and I don't have any temptations and I don't have any issues. So I think we are pushed in a way toward that self-righteous tendency, because we think that's where everyone else is, and so I think it's kind of the environment of a lack of vulnerability that plays into that. If that makes sense and again, that could be completely wrong that's just kind of my theory.

That makes complete sense to me Again, that idea that everybody else has their lives together. I'm the weak link in the chain and so I'm the one that's bringing everybody else down. No, I get that. That resonates really well. Anyway, you're going to finish your thought.

No, no, I was hoping you would agree with me.

Well, I do agree with you.

Go ahead. And I think that kind of takes us back to what are the benefits of being vulnerable, even though there is that big risk is, at the end of the day, when you choose vulnerability, you are shattering that unhealthy veneer that is causing other people to suffer in silence with their trials and their sins. When you say I don't see anybody else doing this, but I'm going to do this, then it helps other people say okay, I feel okay being open about this. I feel okay going to somebody and asking for help with what I'm going through because I saw that other person do it and in a way that makes us like all of those Old Testament characters right, that's Shadrachmi, shachabendigo. Everybody else is bowing down, but we'll go into the fire, and I have to believe that those stories are recorded to help us understand that when you stand alone, you help other people and you demonstrate your faith in God.

Right, and there's a strength that comes in of bending your weakness. You talked about Shadrachmi Shachabendigo, and that the thing that strikes me the most is they don't try to put God in a corner. What they say is we won't bow down to you, we're not going to do what you tell us to do. Our God will save us, and if he doesn't, what we just said is still true. Yeah, again, there's a strength of conviction that they have where they're not going to hold God accountable for the actions that they want to have happen. It's hard being somebody who does not have authority over basically what goes on around us. We like to think we are more important than we truly are. We like to think that we are admired. We like to think that we are good examples. I get it. I mean I can't tell you how many times I've heard a lesson where somebody will say well, don't say that, because people who are visiting with us will think that Christians do such, and so I don't know that I appreciate that much anymore, because one of the things that I would say is everybody's growing. There are people who are not very strong in the faith, and that's not a problem. The problem is when you don't recognize your weakness. I worry that we try to look good for others without being good. Do you understand that? Do you see what I'm saying there, jonathan?

No, no, I certainly agree with all of that. And you say some people say well, don't say that, because then people are going to think Christians do this, christians do that. That's just the reality of it. I don't appreciate the perspective that says oh, christians are broken just like you. Christians were broken. Christians have been fixed and, through the gospel, christians are in the process of transformation. So that's an important distinction to make. But at the same time, christian sin and visitors in the community need to know that we don't think otherwise. They need to know that we do make mistakes and we do fall flat on our face, and the difference isn't that we don't sin. The difference is that we have an advocate with the Father, jesus Christ.

Yeah, I taught the story of the prodigal son last night and in my opinion it's mostly the story of the older brother. And there's a line that the older brother says I have never disobeyed your command and yet you didn't kill the fat calf for me, and I think there's a problem with that. I think he does not recognize that. Number one. The inheritance that the Father gave the younger son was a gift, but by the same token, I think we often look at our righteousness toward God in comparison to other people. Compared to my younger brother, I look great and you need to recognize how great I look compared to the one that wasted all of your money on prostitutes, Don't I look better now? And I think one of the things that he did not recognize is that he was a sinner too. We just don't know about his sin, and there's a danger in putting ourselves above. And you say that we are not broken, we are fixed. God is still getting out the superglue for me. I am still break things I don't know about you.

Yeah, certainly I agree with that. I mean, obviously we're not totally repaired, but we have found the answer. And we're in the process of being fixed is probably a better way to state that, but I agree with you yeah, lots of superglue on me too.

I do think that it's important that we are more vulnerable. How do?

we do that? I don't know.

Then why am I talking to you, Jonathan? I don't know.

You're the one who set this up. I think there are a couple of thoughts that came to my mind. The first one is that we have to remember, when we do encounter the Luke 18 Pharisee, we have to remember that those people are going to be the vast minority. We are scared to be vulnerable because we think when we are 700, people are going to come down on us and condemn us and one person might accept us, when the truth is the exact opposite is the case. We have to remember that the people who are going to be upset with us or judge us are few and far between, because I don't know about you, kenny, but Christians are wonderful people and they have been so merciful and gracious and forgiving when they found out about my sins and that's been my experience and so it's important to remember, first of all, that the vast minority of people are going to condemn you and judge you, and the vast majority will show you mercy and forgiveness and try to help you. I think it's also important to remember that the reason why people get upset with vulnerable people is because it causes them discomfort. Vulnerability is dangerous and uncomfortable for the person who is scared to be vulnerable, and it's not that the person coming down on you is perfect. It's that they're scared to do what you're doing, and I think that's an important thing to remember too. More than anything else, though, we have to remember that vulnerability is about other people and it's about God that I am being an authentic and a genuine and a sincere Christian, and that's what God wants me to do, even if that requires a little risk and a little faith. Who knows how that will go with people? But we know that that's pleasing in God's sight. He wants us to confess our sins to one another, and you're not supposed to shed tears by the sight of one another, and if you are not, you need to make every effort toicr and dirt around you. But we've always thought enormous and shoulders remain above God. We've always thought more about many matters, despite the fact that it's like the life source and the way we think that that's because we're not and we still have to know to hold back upon good and the things we see and the good in those moments that were. That's vulnerability. I almost lost my faith, and he's willing to tell the rest of mankind that. But when does he feel better? When does he get into a better place. It's when he goes to the house of the Lord and when he's around God's people, when he is able to get the help and see what he needs to see to help him overcome that trial. And the other thing that I think is really important is that the only way to ever be connected to our brethren, truly emotionally connected, is to be vulnerable with them. That's so long as you're trying to preserve that secret inner self and you're not willing to talk about your trials or your struggles, and you're only willing to talk about who won the football game on Saturday or how you think the election is going, you're never really going to connect to people. Studies have shown that the only way you really connect with people is through vulnerability.

Let me offer a couple other, just really practical suggestions, and you're welcome to disagree with them. You need to seek out people whose criticism counts. Yeah, there are so many people who will criticize me and I don't listen to them because they don't mean anything to me. But you need to cultivate some relationships, and you're exactly right, vulnerability is about other people and it's one of those things where you have to invest yourself into somebody else enough so that when they're hurt, you hurt. Yeah, if you never do that kind of connection, you're probably going to be self-deluded for a long time because nobody else's opinion counts. The second thing that I would say is ask for help. Even if you don't think you need the help on something, I'm asking for a favor. There was a research study that was done years ago about Christmas cards, of all things, and one of the things that they did with Christmas cards was they took the phone book and they just randomly chose some people to send Christmas cards to, and again, this was a psychological experiment and one of the things that happened was about 40% of the people that got a Christmas card returned a Christmas card. What happened as a result of that is people started getting to know each other, who were actually complete strangers. One of the things, one of the stories that came out of that experiment was the experimenter kept on exchanging Christmas cards and the experimenter ended up being in California and this little family that was in Phoenix had a child that was looking at a university in California for their child. The only people that they knew in California was this couple they've been exchanging Christmas cards with for years, so when the dorm was not going to be opening up, you'll never guess who they asked to stay with while they were in California. Relationships and friendships are born through what we call reciprocity. Ask for a favor? Yes, does that make you seem weak? Yeah, get over it.

Ask for a favor.

Because that's the way we develop relationships is when we again at that idea of vulnerability. Third one and this is one I don't do very much and I need to Pray with other people. Pray out loud, Pray with, have them pray with you and hear how they talk to God, Because the way they talk to God they should be asking for the stuff that means the most to them, and when they hear you ask for the stuff that means the most to you, that'll tell you something. Yeah, the fourth thing surround yourself with people who are better than you are. You don't get to be a better tennis player by playing with people who are worse than you. That's right. But surround yourself with people who you just think, man, if I could, if I only knew a tenth of what they knew, or if I was only a tenth as generous. Or seek out the people that put you to shame, Because just by being around them you'll be better. Does those four things make any sense to you?

I think they do and I really, I really like those things. The interesting part about the last one seeking out people better than you is it relates to vulnerability in a unique sense, I think, where sometimes, when we look at people better than us, what we want to do is we want to stay far away from them and we want to criticize them, because what do they do to us? Their excellence makes us feel ashamed of ourselves, which is exactly why Jesus gets so mad at Mary when she admires Jesus in John, chapter 12. Because she's giving this wonderful gift and he's stealing from the money box. That's why he's mad. At least, that's what I think. So I like your idea that don't shy away from those people that display spiritual excellence, don't criticize them. Learn from them, even though they make you feel very vulnerable.

It was privy to a decision that I did not agree with. That I really disagree with to this day. The thing that I had to resign myself to was number one I don't know what was really said and I don't know what was really meant. Number two I'm going to choose to believe that they had the best of intentions.

And if they don't.

the people I need to pray for are them, and I need to help them, not criticize them. And number three, I might just not know everything. Maybe there's some times when I need to take on a little bit more humility. A lot of people who are able to say the words I don't know and be fine with it. You see what I'm saying there, jonathan.

I think that's one of the hardest things to do, but it's also one of the most important lessons we can learn, and that's all about vulnerability as well.

Yeah, there's a guy that I know he is an elder somewhere and one of the things that I will ask him spiritual questions and I'll say in a terrible Tennessee accent, can he? I just don't know. I appreciate that that's a guy who's thought and he recognizes the end of his thinking. That's somebody I trust. If they don't spout off something really fast, if they don't give me the easy answer, I appreciate that they just tell me I don't know. Yeah, okay, jonathan, that's valuable. I think so too. I think, in a world of know-it-alls, it's important to know what you don't know. Okay, let me ask you this what did I miss? We've talked about vulnerability for a while now. What did I miss on this?

Well, we started at the beginning. I mentioned that there's a balance, a very delicate balance that we have to learn to use when it comes to vulnerability the balance between tolerating sin and confessing sin, the balance between whining and complaining like the Israelites and being real about our struggles, and I think that's a really, really hard balance to strike. I think that A lot of people will look at vulnerability and they'll say, instead of saying, hey, let's try to do this better, they'll say, hey, be careful, be careful, be careful, because you know where it might lead. And so the question is how do we strike that delicate balance? And the answer is Kenny, I just don't know.

You would have like two steps there, John.

Go ahead. I really think that it's one of those things where we are not going to get a comfortable Bible mathematical answer complain four times, but the fifth time it becomes winding. There's no comfortable answer to that, but the answer is that we've just got to start somewhere, and I think you and I would both agree that, when it comes to our experience, we are much, much closer to the extreme of shut up, don't say anything, than we are to the extreme of okay, you're getting too comfortable with your sin. And so I think it's kind of like when my dad taught me how to pitch when I was playing in the little league, he would always tell me if I would throw a ball and it would hit the dirt in front of him, he would always say, okay, it's okay, if you miss, just don't miss low again. And so I threw a pitch that was way low. Then the next pitch I threw was way high, and then he'd say, okay, just don't miss high again. And so I think it's one of those things with vulnerability we're not gonna do it perfectly, but we've got to start throwing the pitches, and as we do that, we're gonna learn how to balance it well, I think.

Yeah, no, you're exactly right, Jonathan. I think one of the things that I worry about is be aware of arguing for your weaknesses, because if you argue for your weaknesses, you get to keep them. Recognize weaknesses as what they are, that they are things that you are working on to try and get over, but if you are just the person who can never give a speech, you are now arguing for your weakness and that's not something. Again, I teach speech and one of the things that I would say is no, you have the skills, everybody has the skills. You might not like to do it, but I need these tools to be in your toolbox so that when you have to do it, you can. And I guess, when I'm in a classroom, one of the things that I can, I learned the students well enough to know okay, I know you can do better than that, and I think you know you can do better than that, but there's some students that I have that I think, no, that's about as good as they can do. I can get them better, but I think they are giving me the best that they've got. And I think you're right you have to learn the people. Once you learn the people, then their capacity becomes more obvious. Does that?

make sense. Yeah yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

What's the difference between fully talking about your vulnerabilities and just becoming whiny?

The difference is being brave enough to continually ask that question. I mean, there's no simple answer to that and there's no one size fits all answer to that. But the backstop to that is that you always have to ask that question and you have to be comfortable always asking that question and never thinking, hey, I figured this out. It's that constant, as Brother Bowman would say, a constant course correcting procedure and we have to get comfortable with that.

There's an old preacher illustration that you might have heard. It's that jet planes are off course about 96% of the time. Have you heard this before?

Yeah, yeah.

And the only time that they are perfectly accurate is at takeoff and landing, and those are the only two places that it makes any difference. Is takeoff at landing. That's where precision is important. Everything else is you just doing the best you can with what you got where you are. Does that make sense? Absolutely Not trying to butter you up, but I love talking to you, jonathan. You are a deep thinker and I really appreciate that. I end all of my podcasts with be good and do good. What's?

the good part about being vulnerable. To put it simply, it's one thing that makes us a lot like our Lord, and it's funny because some people think hiding our weaknesses and not talking about our struggles that makes me like Jesus. Being perfect makes me like Jesus. No, being vulnerable makes you like Jesus. Being willing to take risks and not play it safe and lower your defenses for the sake of other people that makes you like Jesus. That's what he does. He came to this earth to be wounded, to risk being wounded for the sake of other people. And when I'm vulnerable, by talking to other people about my struggles or trials, or even confessing my sins, I'm opening myself up, lowering my defenses and making it possible for me to be wounded, because that's for the sake of others, and so, ultimately, vulnerability makes me like Jesus, which is why all of us should do it. The other thing that I think is really important to say about that is I am not a delusional person, and I don't believe that every single person listening to this is going to get up and say, all right, now I'm gonna be vulnerable, because that's just not the way people work. They're gonna say, hey, there's a great podcast, they're gonna send us their friend, and then they're gonna stew on it for a couple of days and still be scared and not do it. But it only took one person to be vulnerable in order for all of our sins to be washed away. It only took one person to be wounded. And so if there is somebody listening to this who has the courage to risk being vulnerable in their church, in their place, you need to be that person. And it may be just one person listens, but like it was with Jesus, that one person making that one choice, doing that one brave thing that can make an exponential difference within your spiritual family.

I could not have said that better myself. Jonathan, thank you for doing this. I love who you are, I love what you do. Man, thanks for doing this. Hey, enjoy it every time.

Thank you, Kenny, for doing this too.

I said this last time Jonathan and I talked, and I'll say it again I really appreciate who Jonathan is. He has a cool and level head. He's somebody who thinks before he speaks. He's a bright guy. He's a bright guy, yes, but he's a caring guy, and that's something that I appreciate. Jonathan, I'm glad you're local, I'm glad that we've been friendly and that we've gotten to be friends, and I'm glad about who you are and what you do. As for the good thing I'm thinking about, well, my life has gotten pretty complicated lately. Yes, the job is still very difficult, but, that said, even in the difficulty, I've been seeing a lot of rays of sunshine. My older daughter is planning her wedding and things seem to be going okay, knock on wood, and my younger daughter just tried out for the volleyball team and made it. She's thrilled with that. It also means that we're gonna be spending a lot of time at practices. I'm glad she enjoys volleyball and I'm glad this is something that we can do for her. All my kids are sources of both frustration but also excitement and joy. I think that's probably the same relationship God has with us. Sometimes we really are frustrations, but I hope he's able to see the joy in us. Next time, on the program, I plan to bring you an essay. We had something happen at the house that just taught me a lot. It has to do with a car, a problem, and somebody who advised me to fix it rather than buy a new one. We'll talk about that next time. So until next time, let's be good and do good.